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Trigger Warning

When I was in high school, my friends and I started self-harm, just to see what it was like. I remember being in my junior high gym class, which I was miserable in because we had to wear shorts and my legs were filling out at the time and I thought I was starting to get fat. I remember hearing people say how self-harm was supposed to "take the pain away" or whatever, so I started scratching a spot on the back of my wrist until it oozed and bled. I told my parents it was a weird rug burn. I did this on both hands throughout junior high.My friends and I continued this. High school was our first pack of straight razors (we called it the candy dispenser) and at sleepovers we would do straight shots of vodka and then go into my friends bathroom and cut our legs, talking about where and when we cut, what techniques we used, how much we bled, how deep we went, etc. By time I reached college, this wasn't a game anymore, it was a problem. I was using this as a tool to vent my poor self-esteem. Whenever I'd get mad at myself for not being pretty, smart, skinny, or whatever, I would cut to take out my anger and "punish" myself. Whenever I would open up to people about it, they would always ask to see the scars, gasp, and then never mention it again. I had a few friends who supported me through it, but I always felt so awful putting this burden on other people. It's a stupid habit I started for a ridiculously stupid reason, and here I was dumping it all over other people. There was one time where I had just broken up with my boyfriend the day before our one-year anniversary, and I was so depressed and had gained weight from the birth control I was on, I broke apart a shaving razor and used one of the blades to cut the words "fat," "ugly," and "pig" into my stomach. When I opened up to a close friend about it and she saw the scars, she immediately began crying, and I felt so awful. The scars are still there, but they're too faint to read the words. I still have very noticeable scars on my legs, and my most recent boyfriend has commented on them. He wasn't mad or anything, just worried. I guess what I'm confessing here is that I did permanent damage to myself with this stupid fad thing I wanted to do in junior high school, just to try it and see what it was like, and maybe feel a little tough along the way. Now, it's an itch that comes back every time I'm having a down day or something bad happens or I just don't like what I see in the mirror. I'll never tell anyone this, because nothing in my life has given me the right to be this unhappy, and I'm nothing but that poor little attention-seeking white girl, and I hate it. I want to know what it feels like to be normal.